How to avoid “organ rejection” when switching to fintech
Making the big leap from banking to the world of fintech can be daunting. Working in “tradfi” gives you lots of skills, but they may not be as relevant as you think. Global head of fintech at New York-based headhunting and organization consultancy Kornferry, Deepali Vyas, says you need some things more than others if you’re going to “organize rejection” when transplanting into fintech.
Be an entrepreneur
First, successful fintech graduates are “entrepreneurial,” says Vyas. When fintechs hire ex-bankers, she says they want to see that they have had a strategy and “executed it with good results”.
This is because fintechs are currently operated with a bottom-up perspective. The teams are smaller and more focused, and there is a greater sense of accountability. If you’re thinking about moving from banking to fintech, Vyas says you should ask yourself, “Am I running my unit like a CEO?” This applies in particular to Pnl management.
Be data driven
If you want to work in fintech, you need to be comfortable with data as a tool in decision making. “The data you’re working with will determine what strategy you go into,” says Vyas.
Show willingness to take risks
Another key question to ask is “how much risk appetite do I have?”
Moving to fintech is not necessarily for people who want a quiet life. Wages are typically skewed away from wages and in favor of stock options, and those options will fall if valuations plummet. Vyas says the ideal candidate is someone who is happy to take this risk head on.
Choose jobs alongside your current role
Fintech is all about technology, but some jobs are more technical than others. Vyas says “payments, crypto and digital assets” jobs are targeting hiring people with tech backgrounds. But “fintechs that are in more traditional capital markets lean toward traditional finance because they need the institutional knowledge, so it’s kind of two-thirds, one-third split.”
Know how to code
In many roles, some level of coding ability will help. Vyas says Python and SQL will help you. So will “be computer skills in financial strategies, data research, data science, data visualization and tableau.”
Show that you are high conviction, high delivery
Perhaps most important is conviction. “If you have high conviction about what you have done in your current role, if you believe you can do things, and deliver on your milestones, you can write your own resume and write your own compensation trajectory, says Vyas.
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